126 xJ1970 W R GRACE & C r / I V , :> . ..... . l ' 'fA, /, . Our tweedy-textured midi-vest-pant suit takes you anywhere. About $60. Ribbed turtleneck. In so many colors. About $14. Obviously John Meyer. "JOHN MaVtiiR .. sister," Eve told her "Once, when I was really working hard on a story, my sister went out and had an affair. She said, 'Ha, you may have brains, but I'm a woman. I'm more experi- enced in sex than you are.'" Eve signed and added, "Younger sisters must pick up very quickly on female . b " attn utes. Barbara nodded. "My sister was older, and she was this fierce male chauvinist," she saId. "She thought my mother was a complete washout, and as for me, she had this image of me as a sneaky little girl, full of feminine wiles." "\i\T ell, why not?" Hannah sajd. "Like, I rememher Ruth lying there in her crib, looking smug, wearing these incredible red booties that my moth- er knit for her. I'll always remem ber it." "And I remelnber that you got to have buckles on your over- alls," Ruth said, laughing. "Mine had those awful bahy straps." "\Ve have to watch out for thdt kind of power play among kids in our future collectives," Barbara remarked. "I was into power, all right," }Zuth saId. "I'd wake up Hannah at night, and then I'd sneak into my parents' bed without her. I'd kno\\T she was dying to come but she wasn't allowed to anymore." Ruth glanced over at her sister. "Once, I dared her to COIlle with me. I promised that they'd let her In. \Ve]], I got to stetY, hut when 01Y father discovered Hannah there he threw her out." "Oh, no," Barbara said. Nina said that it was no wonder children had fantasies ahout being adopted. "It has to do with the lies parents tell you. They give ) ou all that crap ahout death and Santa Claus, so when the) 're cruel you're ure they'" e been lying about YOU, too. BL- cause what's to stop them from saying, 'You're not ours'? " Eve nodded enthusiastically. "That was my big childhood trauma, when I asked my mother about death and she wouldn't answer honestly," she said. "God, how insecure kids ll1USt feel without even realizing it." "J ust like women," Nina said. W HENEVER Hannah feels ex- pansive, she lIkes to compare herself to Simone de Beauvoir. Both Hannah and Mlle. de Beauvoir are Capricorns, a fact that Hannah sa) s could hardl} be coincidental. Then, too, Hannah ft equently points out, when her hook IS published it is going to be the major American book on femi- nism, just as J\;Ille. de Beduvoir's book is the major feminist book in France. Hannah first encountered "The Second Sex" on the back shelf of a Denver bookstore when she was sixteen. She spent a week reading it, and she says that by now she understands de Beau- voir better than anybody she has ever met Once, in college, she stopped speaking to a young Illàn who hdd been her closest friend, beceHlse he had "the typical male insensitivity to put de Beauvoir down." They were arguing at the time about the first vohlll1e of de Beauvoir's autobiography, "Memoirs of a Dutiful Oaughter"-a book that Hannah maIntains is reIllarkclbly remi- niscent of her own girlhood. She sa) s that she relied on the .$ memoir clS "a kind of guideline for what to do " to break away." Hannah comes from a big Orthodox Jewish fam- ily that left Hungary in the twenties and m de an unlikely enclave for itself in Colorado. The family was known in Budapest for the rabbis and T altn udic scholars it produced. Hannah her- self SdYS that she rejected ()rthodoxy as cl little girl, "on rationalist and feIllinist grounds," but she likes to talk about the wisdom of her old rela- tives. "The reason I'm gOIng to fit so easily into the intellectual élite is that I ha ve the background for it," she says. "It's only a matter of time until I am d . d " I"covere . Hannah's father had a small busi- ness. Her Illother had ninL children. "I was always very aware of the female thing, because of IllY Inother," Hannah sa) s. "Like, I nevel played house, be- cause who, given 3 choice, would Wclnt to play house? Even the religion had contell1pt for women. The little boys' prayer went sOIllethillg like 'Thank God fot not 111elkillg me d wometl1.' The little girls' prayer went 'Thank God for 111aking Ille as You will.' '\1 ell, I always saId the boys' prayer. I had contelnpt for women, too. 1 want- ed to acco111plish something. Once, I sold candy bars to the other kids on the school bus dt a nickel-el-bar profi 1. I knew I had the smarts-the husiness SInarts-even then. I had a menu printed, and I'd take orders, and then I'd buy the candy when I got off the bus fOl a minute to see this little refu- gee kid to his front door. My father found out about it from the principal, and he was kind of proud. My mother was furious. She just couldn't under- stand why she dIdn't have a normal daughter. I was independent, difficult, artistic. She couldn't deal with me, and I had no patience with her. :\1y con-